18k seems a little expensive for a jeep. The texture you have so far seems like a good base, but it seems a bit bland. I think some unique detail is needed like logos and dried mud sprayed from the wheels. The door seam also seems really sharp and unrealistic, which I think is mostly because of the sudden change of color and lighting. Is that from the texture, or is that a smoothing issue?

JezGreen

02-23-2010, 12:48 PM

I think 18k is alright. I made one recently and although high, I was using almost as a main character. (25,000)

TBH I'd just make it look ace and not worry about the limit (as long as it doesn't get ott)
You can always cut it down at a later date if needed, just make it look ace 1st.

just wondering if the scale of the windows are right (although I modelled a diff version (60's))

Jez

NullHypothesis

02-23-2010, 06:10 PM

What does your spec map look like? The body of the vehicle looks a little shinier than the top, but other than that, there doesn't appear to be much specular variation where I'd expect it to be obvious, like around those dirty rusted edges. A low-res gloss map might not be a bad idea, either.

Decency

02-25-2010, 01:08 PM

I would recommend more geometry round the wheel well, you have a relatively high poly count (still acceptable) however, here you have major faceting. Your lights at the back are more round than this, and 1/10th the size.

What program did you bake the normal map with?

Zenderquai

02-26-2010, 11:34 PM

Hey there Gsokol..

I don't think 18k is too high for *a* land rover..

I think it's very high for your landrover, though.. Hardly any of the triangles are visible, and you seem to be putting a lot of unecessary edge-loops in. when you use normal maps, you only need to add triangles that contribute to your model's silhouette; otherwise, you use the normal map to describe the detail.

It's a really tough thing, cars for next-gen consoles..

I worked on F1, Wipeout HD, and Motorstorm2, and the bodywork on the vehicles was almost always modelled in. Normal maps make shaders' frag-count SO high, it's unreal.. so to have a full grid (in racing games, obviously) costs a lot.. I mean, in F1 - that's 22 unique cars (maybe 26 this year) all sporting 2048x2048 diffuse, specular, and normal? That's expensive..

... for me.. it seems like you're kinda wasting your normal mapping on features that don't really need it -
stuff like rivets and doorhandles, locks, petrol cap, front grille, hubcaps are fine.. but you could do that kind of detail on a 512, and save loads of space..

as long as you aren't incorporating surface detail like rust n dents into your high-res model, it's kind of a waste of space.

Try bump-mapping your high-res model, and re-projecting your normals.
the bump should come through in the normal map.

having said that, I can't tell what bit of your landrover is normal mapped.. could you post some UVs?

Nick.

gsokol

02-27-2010, 07:34 AM

Thanks for the critiques guys!

PS. Sorry for the massive amount of pictures in this post :)

I did some work over the past few days on the texture, adding in a little bit more dirt and whatnot.

phunky_nick: Here are some comparisons with and without the normal map. I've also included Color, Spec, and Normal maps so you can see what I have. As for useless tris, where do you think I can shed them off? I felt like they were all used to aid in the silhouette. I think I can take a loop off the side of the canopy but I'm not sure where else.

Decency: Will do, I'll definitely add a few more verts to this area to round it out some. I baked the normals from the hi poly with 3dsmax, then in photoshop I took additional bump sourced from the color map and used the Nvidia filter, then overlayed the layer on the bake, and handpainted a few details in/out.

NullHypothesis: My Spec map is up here so you can take a look at it. I did a little modifying of it since the original screenshots, but I'm guessing it may still need some more variation.

Predator: I think the door seam might partially be from inconsistancy in specular highlight. The seam of the door is most likely harsh looking because there is a geometrical seam since the door is a seperate mesh, so it can be opened/closed.

EDIT: Several of you mentioned that my tri count was too high, and I'm not sure if this will make a difference or not, but I failed to mention that the car has a full interior/motorbay as well. I attached images of that as well.

EDIT X2: There is no opacity on here (for the windows/grill/flag decal), but it does exist within the Alpha of the Color map. I'm just using the "Standard" shader, which as far as I know doesn't support it. This is going to be used eventually in UDK, and it accepts the opacity there.

as far as the term "silhouette" is used, we kinda have to suggest that the silhouette for game-models is always changing - as it's interactive in a 3D space. So ths silhouette isn't so much the side-profile, but more it's a case of instances where you can see an edge-loop, or an edge on its own, contrasted against either a background, OR against other parts of the model.

For example - your wheel wells aren't ever silhouetted against the background, but those edges are "silhouetted" against the dark wheel-well interior.. and such angular features aren't becoming of an 18,000 triangle model.
The wheels have *I think* some unecessary edge-loops
- you shouldn't really need to model-in the bolts on the wheels, or the hub-cap..
there seems to be a few loops where the tyre meets the wheel, that you might not need..

It's great to see the interior, it shows where more of the triangles are being spent..
The Rubber boot at the foot of the gear stick seems to contain a huge amount of triangles, where it might just need one, and a decent normal map - the dashboard itself looks like it has a lot of unecessary edge loops..

There's a texture note, also - :) - I was suspicious of it on your first post, but you'd confirmed it for this post. Your opacity map: in a pixel shader (which this would have to be) as soon as you place an opacity mask into it, every pixel is checked, whether there's an opacity value on it or not. So on your shader, your entire 2048x2048 shader is being checked for opacity values, when maybe only 256x256 of it is actually affected. This is a pretty big waste of GPU..
it's far better to have 2 discrete shaders: one fully opaque, and another, much smaller one solely for transparent features, that uses the opacity map in a far better way. (you might fing that a separate shader for glassy details doesn't need a normal map, and can just be specular/diffuse/opacity)

But, all my opinions are based on my experiences with game-art, and I dont' know what game-context you're thinking that your LandRover would be seen in. :)

Will it be a driveable vehicle in an FPS? or just a prop in a level?

:)

Nick.

gsokol

02-27-2010, 08:09 PM

Its being made for an fps. The vehicle can be driven, and I just found out last night that when driving its supposed to be in first person view of the inside :/

However, it sounds like we might just swap from the exterior vehicle to a cockpit only interior model, so more geometry could be added to the interior without the dead weight of the rest of the car.

The places where you said I can lose loops, I agree, and I'll optimize a bit today.

NullHypothesis

02-28-2010, 06:23 PM

The specular map looks like what I was expecting. Sharper local contrast usually works better for that much rust and dried mud.

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